The safe and transparent way for sharing text documents between different parties, where part of the text is kept private.

It is the digital equivalent of a FOIA request, with two specific goals:

+ lock and unlock your text with a key
+ verify that a text was not modified

I needed a way to publish text files where part of the content could only be revealed with a key and that other people could verify it is original. The text had to be readable even as small parts of it would be hidden from plain view, the syntax needed to be simple so it wouldn't be forgotten or difficult to use.

The choice of (( and )) is interesting , as I would have expected something more like #$ob and #$cb

I like it, though - depending of course on how much of the text is crypted/obfuscated - the current "black bar" seems not particularly easy to the eye (or to the printer if printed).

And - as is - it seems like the length of the black bar is proportional to the length of the original word (same number of characters) which is not IMHO a very good idea as it is giving away a (very small, still ...) part of information on what is behind it, a set of (say) 5 or 6 asterisks, independently from the length of the word, would be highly ******, ****** if the tool is aimed to the ****** of ****** ****** to be ******.

The length of obfuscation proportional to "underlying" text remains an issue when you obfuscate single words (and of course is not a problem if you obfuscate several words or entire paragraphs).

And to be fair, within the limits above what existed really before (real ink on real paper) more or less worked, while somehow later with some (virtual) ink on (virtual) paper something didn't wok out as expected, JFYI: